Brahms: The Violin Sonatas – Kavakos

   in Piano International (May, 2016)
Here is versatility touched with a touch of pianistic genius (an overworked term, but one that comes irresistibly to mind) on a truly glorious scale. Having described Yevgeny Sudbin’s first Scarlatti album (his opening salvo for BIS) as of a ‘superlative vitality and super-fine sensitivity’, I now find him transcending such quality with an ever more vivid sense of Scarlatti’s infinite variety, his uninhibited exuberance, his cloudy introspection.

As before, he juxtaposes the familiar and unfamiliar from the 555-plus Sonatas though his incandescent response makes everything sound like a discovery. This is Scarlatti as if new-minted, whether raucous (holding his sides, as it were, with laughter) or lost in dreams. As …